Winning (and Losing) Big

Singer, actress, and now author Jennifer Hudson reveals the secrets to her 80-pound weight loss, her favorite (surprising!) low-cal snacks  and how faith and family got her through her toughest moments

Sweating it Out

As she recalibrated her eating habits, the self-described "cardio queen" also stepped up her exercise, mostly running and logging time on the StairMaster. "I was always active to a certain extent, but if you're not eating right, it doesn't matter," she says, shaking her head. "If you eat a banana pudding and then go run, you're only running off the calories you just ate, so you're really not losing anything."

So Hudson forced herself to stay in motion. If she found herself heading for the fridge, she'd head to the DVD player instead and pop in a workout DVD. Or she'd scoop up David Jr. and head outside. If she still found herself mindlessly reaching for snacks, she'd question herself about her motives, as Weight Watchers had taught her to do: "Food is meant to be used as fuel for our bodies. If you're using it for any other reasons, take a step back and ask yourself what's up," she says.

Hudson's goal was always to look slim but still curvy, not buff: "I don't even want muscular arms. I like a natural look," she insists. And she isn't a fan of extreme workouts. When she occasionally watches a weight-loss show on TV, she gets frustrated at the trainers. "Look at what you're doing to these people," she says, shaking her head. "People are throwing up, falling down, about to die. How is that supposed to help them? Forget it. [When I see that,] I'd rather be at home, overweight. I'm not knocking trainers, but that's not what an everyday person wants to do."

Hudson clearly sympathizes with the everyday person. Like all of us, she can have trouble getting motivated to hit the gym, so she's developed another unique trick for jump-starting a workout. "There would be times I would be sitting on the couch, like, Man, I really don't feel like working out," she says. "So I'd force myself to just get up and run  literally run  out the door." She laughs. "Because if you sit there and think about it, you're going to talk yourself out of it."

These days, the size-6 Hudson is on a maintenance plan, and rather than working out every day, which was her weight-loss regimen, she does it four times a week. And she says she has become so accustomed to healthy eating that she's lost the taste for the heavy fare of her youth, such as burgers. (So she probably won't be making much use of the free-burgers-for-life card reportedly given to her by her former employer, Burger King, where she worked as a teen.)

Hudson admits that when she dines at restaurants, where ingredients are often a mystery, she hounds the chef. "I am pretty much in the kitchen," she says. "I'll ask, 'What is in this? Can you tell me how many ounces it is? Do you use butter?' I have no problem telling my server that I want my chicken grilled with no sauce, my fish broiled with no butter, and my vegetable steamed instead of sautéed."

But mostly, she's a creature of habit who prepares and eats her "greatest hits" recipes. Breakfast is often an egg-white omelette with a little smoked salmon or turkey bacon, sometimes with toast; for lunch, she'll have thin-crust pizza loaded with healthy toppings or the salad she concocted from all her favorite ingredients  greens, goat cheese, shaved almonds, tangerines, dried cranberries, chicken, and vinaigrette dressing. "Mmm, it's like your taste buds are dancing," she says.

Because lunch is usually her biggest meal of the day, she has something smaller for dinner, depending on how many points she has left  anything from fruit to her healthy remake of a childhood meal: turkey wings (boiled, not fried, and then baked for a little crunch), sweet potato fries, and greens. Happily, her son is following her healthy example; he clamors for the greens. "It's the cutest thing," she says, "I'm like, 'Wow, this is really working.' " The other day, the two of them were watching TV, "and all he wanted to do was lie in Mommy's lap and eat cookies. But now he knows his limit. He sees Mommy's example and knows that he's going to get two, not the whole box." She smiles. "What's funny is that he's never known me overweight. If he sees a clip of the old Jennifer from Dreamgirls, he doesn't know who it is."

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